Me Me Me

Hot Dogging

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Greetings from Munich. I arrived here on Tuesday night from London, where it was rainy and gray, to weather that felt more like Southern California than Germany. I guzzled Diet Coke on the flight so that I wouldn't fall asleep when I met my friends Daniela & David Tully for drinks at 9 p.m.  Daniela is a top executive at ProSeiben, a major German network, and her American husband David is a screenwriter. It was great to see them again and to get caught up on the state of the German TV market (which is lousy, just like everywhere else).

The next morning I awoke to a beautiful day…clear blue skies, warm weather. It was the nicest weather I've ever had in Munich and I took full advantage of it, walking all over the city and discovering it anew.  The best part was sitting in the Viktualienmarkt, eating a delicious hotdog and butter streusel, sipping Diet Coke, and enjoying the scenery.

I got back to the hotel in mid-afternoon for meetings with my friends at Action Concept, the studio I am working with over here. I ended the day with a nice long dinner at an outside table at an old Bavarian restaurant with Heiko Schmidt, the terrific line producer I worked with on FAST TRACK. I was in bed by midnight…but I awoke at 3:30 in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up around 4, called home, answered some emails, and studied my notes for my meetings.

Now it's 7 a.m. I have been up for three-and-a-half hours already, and my meetings start with breakfast at 9. The most important meeting is at 3, when I will have to pitch three projects to a potential international coproduction partner. I hope I don't fall asleep in middle of it.

Tomorrow morning I head back to L.A….and hope to do some serious plotting for my next  MONK book on the plane. On Monday I start jury duty.

Lazy Monday

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I woke up at 6 a.m. on Monday…I would have liked to sleep more after a day without sleep, but that's jet-lag for  you. I say in bed for an hour, trying to sleep, then  got up, had breakfast at a nice little cafe, and spent an hour or so making notes on a feature rewrite that I am up for. Then I roamed around London as it woke up, too. 

Around noon, I headed out to actor Shaun Prendergast's  home for easter and had a marvelous time with his friends and family. I lost track of most their names in my jet-lag haze, but there were lots of actors and writers there, including Stephen Tompkinson, the star of a series called WILD AT HEART. I've  never seen his show but I knew that I'd seen him before, I just couldn't place his face until the train ride back into London…he was in the final PRIME SUSPECT.

 Stephen and his wife shared some fascinating stories about life in South Africa. They also shot a documentary in Africa…I didn't quite get what it was about, but part of it involved taking tribesmen up in a hot  air balloon to see their land from the sky for the first time.  Another actor, who I gathered is also a director, regaled us with tales about his time on location in India on SHARPE'S PERIL.

Anyway, I had a great time chatting while stuffing myself with Shaun's delicious steak & oyster pie, roast potatos, and all sorts of tasty dishes laid out buffet-style on a big table in the kitchen. I learned that the TV business in the UK is going through a rough patch, too. Shows are being asked to significantly trim their budgets or face cancellation. I was told that two hit shows, LEWIS and WIRE IN THE BLOOD, were cancelled over costs and that one of the networks is on shaky financial footing. I'm sure I will learn more about that when I have breakfast with my UK  agent and head off together for some studio meetings.

I spent my evening walking around London and then went back to my hotel room to write up my notes for my pitch on the feature rewrite…and was in bed by 11. I awoke 45 minutes ago…at 5 am. Wide awake. That's jet-lag. I have lots of meetings this morning…then a flight to Munich late this afternoon…and drinks tonight with some friends from a German TV network. I hope I can catch a nap on the plane…

I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane…

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I am off to Europe  in a few minutes for two and a half days in London and two and a half days in Munich. In London, I'll spend Easter Monday with actor Shaun Prendergast and his family (Shaun was one of the stars of my film FAST TRACK). On Tuesday,  I'll be meeting my UK agent for the first time face-to-face for breakfast and then he's got meetings set up for me with some studios. Then I am jetting off to Munich, where I will be joining my good friends at Action Concept to pitch some projects to broadcasters. It's going to be a whirlwind week but I am really looking forward to it.  It's been a year since I've been to Europe but it feels like much longer, especially after spending so many months working there in 2006 & 2007. 

Goodbye, Starlog

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01Starlog Magazine is no more — at least not in print. This is very sad news for me because I put myself through school writing for the magazine (among others) and it had an enormous impact on my life that I am still feeling today. 

On assignment for Starlog, I visited hundreds of movie and TV sets and interviewed so many actors, screenwriters, directors…people like Tom Cruise, Robert Zemeckis, Roy Scheider, Paul Verhoeven, Roger Moore, Michael J. Fox, Michael Crichton, William Friedkin, Sigourney Weaver, Richard Donner, Timothy Hutton, Gene Roddenberry, Richard Maibaum, Dan O'Bannon, Tom Selleck, Wes Craven, Kurt Russell, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Marquand, Tobe Hooper, Johnny Depp, George Lucas, and Lorenzo Semple Jr., to name just a few. And I learned a lot about the movie and TV business along the way.

I collected some of those interviews, along with articles by my friends (and fellow Starlog writers) William Rabkin and Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier,  in two books — Science Fiction Film-Making in the 1980s and Dreamweavers: Fantasy Film-making in the 1980s.

Perhaps the highlight of my time as a reporter for Starlog was when they flew me to London to cover the premiere of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, the first James Bond film starring Timothy Dalton. 

All the journalists were invited by the studio to the premiere, which Prince Charles and Lady Diana were attending as well. We had to wear tuxedos and were driven to the event in limos. There were huge crowds being held back behind barracades in front of the Odeon Theatre as we pulled up. I got out of the limo just as a short young lady was emerging from the limo in front of me, so we walked in together. People were going nuts, taking pictures of us and waving. I leaned over and whispered to her: "Makes you wish you were famous, doesn't it?"X10799

She laughed, patted my arm, and we parted in the lobby. Almost immediately I was swarmed by my fellow reporters. One of them asked "Do you know who you were walking with?"

I had no idea. I figured she was another reporter. He told me it was Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. I still had no idea who she was. So either she thought my remark was clever or that I was a complete dolt for not knowing who she was. But I like to think that somewhere out there is a photo from that event with a caption like "Chrissie Hynde with unidentified lover."

But, most of all, I am thankful to Starlog for my family. If not for the magazine, I might never have met the charming Lofficiers, which would have been a terrible thing…since they introduced me to my wife Valerie. We've been married for 19 years and have a 13-year-old daughter, Madison.

So for me, Starlog was more than a magazine that covered science fiction and fantasy movies, books and TV shows. It changed my life.

Good-bye, Starlog. I will miss you.

UPDATE: Starlog is gathering some of the reactions to the bad news. My good friend Dave McDonnell, long-time editor of the magazine, posted this:

"Lee Goldberg is an old friend of mine. His unsolicited interview "The Man who Killed Spock" (WRATH OF KHAN writer Jack Sowards) was on my desk the day I started. I lobbied to buy it and he wrote countless pieces for us."

It was my first national magazine sale and I was totally thrilled. That sale, along with tearsheets from some of my subsequent Starlog articles, led to me writing for Newsweek, United Press International, American Film, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times syndicate, among many others. But you never forget your "first."

UPDATE 4-15-2009: More reactions to the news from Entertainment Weekly,  SFSignal,  Bob Greenberger, Mark Evanier, John Kenneth Muir and my cousin Danny Barer.

Blessed

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I am blessed to be in Missouri. Literally. On the flight to St. Louis, the stewardess told me to have a blessed night. And today, when I had lunch in Cape Girardeau at the Everything Is Fried Buffet (okay, that wasn't the name of the place, but it should have been), the waitress told me to have a blessed day. What they really should have at the buffet is a priest on hand to perform last rites. I was the thinnest person in the place by fifty pounds, and I'm not exactly scrawny. Everything they serve is fried, breaded, or noodled. It's no wonder that every patron except me prayed before they ate.

Cape Girardeau is Rush Limbaugh's home town, which explains a lot about Rush. There's a mural of him on the levee downtown and I've got a picture of myself in front of it.  I skipped the tour to his birthplace and the soda fountain where he hung out as a kid and the alley where he was beaten up every day after school.

I'm here for the 94th Annual Missouri Writer's Guild Conference. Yesterday and today Kate Angelella, an editor at Simon & Schuster, and I critiqued manuscripts that were read to us. I kid you not. Two pages were read to us and we had to offer a critique in front of the audience. That's not really fair to the writer or to us, but we all played along anyway. Kate and I were very candid and it's a credit to Missouri writers that neither one of us was beaten up in the parking lot afterwards, though one guy did follow me into the mens room and, while I was peeing, asked me for more advice on his story.

"This isn't a good time," I said, standing at the urinal.

"Why not?"

"Because I am peeing,"

He looked over the divider at me peeing. "How many Diet Pepsis did you have today?"

I wasn't the only one who got hit up in the bathroom for editorial guidance. One of the women authors was sitting in a stall when a lady in the next one slid a manuscript under the divider for her to read.

My keynote address went all right — I only made one reference to bowel movements and three to gang rape, or so I am told. Afterwards, I was asked to assist with the awards ceremony and to hug the winners (most of whom were women). I am not exaggerating when I say that there were at least fifty awards given…a good many of them to the same woman. By the end of the night, I felt like I'd committed adultery.

Tomorrow I do a three hour TV writing seminar and then I head back to L.A…

  

I’m Going Global

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I recently attended a Writers Guild seminar on international opportunties for writers. The basic message was that writers need to start thinking globally if they want to survive in this business. I have been thinking globally for a while now…especially after spending much of 2007 working abroad (writing and producing the action movie FAST TRACK, among other things).  It also helps that I've been married to a French woman for nineteen years…France feels like my second home and I am pretty comfortable in Europe.

So with the global marketplace in mind, I have been looking around for an agent to represent me across the Atlantic.  I am pleased to say that after a long search that I've just signed with Peter MacFarlane at MacFarlane Chard in London, one of the best agencies for actors, directors, producers and writers in the UK. I'm very excited about this new relationship and the great opportunties that this could lead to for me overseas. 

Meanwhile, I will continue to be represented for film & TV in the U.S. by Mitchel Stein and in publishing worldwide by Gina Maccoby. 

I am very loyal when it comes to agents. I have been with Mitch for fifteen years and Gina for seven. So if things work out with Peter, I'll probably still be represented by him when I'm eligible for social security…

The Skinny on Gun Monkeys

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You may have noticed that I haven't talked much here lately about my TV and screen work. That's because I don't feel comfortable talking about projects that are in development and not yet a certainty. But since CrimeSpree broke the news about me scripting the movie version of GUN MONKEYS, I've been getting a lot of emails asking about me about the project.

I've always been a huge fan of Victor's book. In fact, we first met at the Edgars, where GUN MONKEYS was up for an award, and have been good friends ever since. About a year or so ago, I optioned the book and wrote a spec screenplay adaptation, which my agent then shopped all over town.  The script was strong enough that it got me "meet and greet" meetings at studios and production companies everywhere…and nearly got me a gig rewriting a Major Studio Action Movie, but that fell through (however, the aborted Major Studio Action Movie rewrite got me into business with the Director, with whom I have been out pitching TV series concepts). More on that whirlwind experience another time…

Eventually Two Hot Young Producers with deals all over town eventually optioned my GUN MONKEYS script, and with it my underlying option on Victor's book. They spent several months in negotiations with A Major Hollywood Star who was interested in directing the film…but not starring in it. That deal fell through at the last minute. 

Now the producers have attracted the interest of a Major Distributor and a Major Hollywood Agency is packaging GUN MONKEYS. They've also signed director Ryuhei Kitamura, who has an astonishing visual style but is better known in Japan than he is here (his only U.S. film was last year's horror flick "Midnight Meat Train"). That will change soon, whether it's with GUN MONKEYS or another film. I'm told that the script and the director make an attractive package and, for the last few weeks, another Major Hollywood Star has been circling the project. If he signs on, things should come together very quickly…but that's a big IF.  

I don't know whether all of this will lead to the movie finally getting made, but it has been a interesting ride for Victor and me. It has also given me a refresher course in the feature film business, which I've discovered is a completely different planet than the TV world that I have been living on for so long. More on that some other time…

Last Day in Paradise

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I had two panels on the last day of Left Coast Crime…one was hosting a mystery trivia contest in which my friend Robin Burcell was stumped by a two-part question in which the correct answers were "Robin Burcell" and the name of the lead character of her first book. Maybe she was just sunburned, tired, or hung over…or the question was badly worded. To be fair, I was so relaxed after a week in Hawaii that I probably would have missed a question in which I was the correct answer, too. But it was very funny nonetheless. 

The other panel, which included Jan Burke, Rhys Bowen, Honolulu librarian Cynthia Chow, and LCC organizer Bill Gottfried, was about…actually, I have no clue what it was about. People asked us questions and we answered them with wit, cleverness, and amazing insights into human nature, politics, religion, sex, and philosophy. All in all, I had a great time in Hawaii and was truly honored to be LCC's toastmaster (I even got a very, glass sculpture as an award…as did Barry Eisler and Rhys Bowen…which I will share with you when it arrives by post in a few days).

(Pictured, me looking goofy in my Monk hat and LCC 2009 t-shirt… and my embarrassed daughter deciding to be seen with me anyway)

Crime in Paradise

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The best part for me of Tuesday's Left Coast Crime conference activities occurred in the evening. First I screened an episode of MONK and answered questions for the audience. It's rare that I get to see one of my episodes with an audience larger than my wife and the family dog (and they both usually sleep through everything I write on TV). I then spent a few hours on the patio chatting with my wife, my daughter, and my friends Barry Eisler, Robin Burcell, Jan Burke, and Twist Phelan. We talked about everything from dating to booksignings. It was great fun.

The sun finally came out in full force on Wednesday morning. I started the day as toastmaster for the brunch and awards banquet, which I hope was as much fun for the audience as it was for me. The conference isn't over yet, but I can safely say that Bill and  Toby Gottfried have pulled  off another successful Left Coast Crimes. They announced that the next Left Coast  Crime will be in Los Angeles and then Sacramento in 2011.

After the awards, my family and I played hookey from the conference to swim, snorkel, and do some sight-seeing, returning in time for an all-author signing at five. We ended the day by going out to dinner with authors Jonathan Hayes, Jason Starr, and Michelle Gagnon.  That was a lot of fun, too.

Tomorrow I have two more panels and then I'm going to try to sneak to the beach to burn the few spots on my body that aren't already charred.

UPDATE: Rhys Bowen reports on the awards brunch and yesterday's conference events for the St. Martin's Press blog.